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Young & Only Pop-Up Shop at Chinatown Experiment

Vancouver Is Awesome is a proud sponsor of The Chinatown Experiment , a storefront dedicated to pop ups which provides anyone that has an idea and the desire to bring it to life with the opportunity to make it happen.

Vancouver Is Awesome is a proud sponsor of The Chinatown Experiment, a storefront dedicated to pop ups which provides anyone that has an idea and the desire to bring it to life with the opportunity to make it happen. Every time a new pop up is about to launch you'll catch a sneak peek here on V.I.A.!

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Earlier this week, fashion retailer and lifestyle blog Young & Only opened a pop-up shop in Chinatown. Founded by Kirsty Tsang, Dammy Ogunseitan, and Terry Chen, they cater to stylish individuals who are culturally informed and socially conscious. Brands to look out for include Publish, Cameo, Someday’s Lovin, RVLT, and BC’s very own, London Alexander and Beaux Ties. Young & Only is also teaming up with Gastown florist Greenstems, and artist Ola Volo, for this week-long pop-up.

Sunday to Thursday: 11am – 7pm, Friday to Saturday: 11am – 9pm #YOpopup

We got the chance to chat with Kirsty about Young & Only culture and their pop-up shop.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you met your two partners?

Kirsty Tsang: I graduated from Emily Carr University with a degree in communication design and met Dammy through my first job. He did some contract marketing for the company that I worked for when I first graduated. My second partner Terry, we’ve actually been friends for many many years, we just decided to do this together because he was also looking to start his own business and we had similar interests.

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Beyond a life-style blog and fashion e-commerce store, you describe Young & Only as a culture. What’s your mission?

KT: When we first started the company we wanted it to be more than just about selling clothes. The blog is a huge tool for us to leverage the idea of building a culture. We feature a lot of really interesting people from different industries doing cool things. We target people who are very socially conscious, they’re

culturally aware, they’re kind of information consumers in that sense. For example, we’re working with local businesses, local artists, and we’re trying to bring people who have common interests together. We’re using Young & Only to connect people.

About 6 months ago you had a pop-up to preview the launch of your e-commerce store. What did you learn from that experience?

I would definitely say expectations. We talk a lot about having expectations and that helps us change the business. Even in the last six months we’ve learned a lot of things. In addition to that, it really helped us understand our market more. Even though e-commerce is a blooming industry, there is a lot of money to be made and a lot of people shopping online, that face-to-face interaction is still really important. Meeting people and exchanging ideas is key.

What inspired this pop-up? What can people expect to see?

We decided to do it because we had some pretty good feedback from the first one and we have our spring and summer collections. So, why not right? We thought it would be a good idea to get everybody out and work with some other artists and businesses. You can expect a lot of inventory. There’s going to be a lot of different brands from different parts of the world. We have brands from Australia, the UK, Denmark, the States, and locally too of course.

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For you personally, how is curating in digital space different from curating a physical space?

It’s definitely a new experience. Formally I’ve been trained in design; not specifically buying, marketing, trend forecasting and things like that. But I’ve always really enjoyed fashion and that’s what drew me to this project in the beginning. Working with and meeting different people has helped me transition into that. What pushes us to keep going is how much we love the brand and how much we love what we’re doing.

I’m going to steal a question from the Young & Only Q&As. Any words of wisdom?

No matter how hard something seems at first, things usually fall into place. And everything happens for a

reason. That’s something that I’ve really come to believe.

Follow Young & Only on Instagram and Facebook #YOpopup for daily flash sale announcements